A monumental pile of steaming excrement. Worse then the prequels which, while hideous, at least were not soft reboots. Perhaps actually the dumbest film ever made. The Last Star Wars movie and in fact the last occasion to ever trust any movie critic ever again. What, Disney didn't wine and dine 7% of critics on the planet on RottenTomatoes? Live and learn. Next time they'll seal the deal.

SPOILERS:

Where to begin? Rey's dark-side vision. That scene is a metaphor for the entire movie. In TFA, her vision was a moment of pure magic, a scene which opened up new mythical possibilities. In TLJ, it's a cold, dead anticlimax. It's like the waiter at a Disney restaurant brings you your dinner, removes the lid - and there's nothing there but a plastic steak. The magic basically evaporates at this point.

The entire plot is so farcical I have to wonder if someone, somewhere is deliberately winding up the audience. Finn and Rose are off riding camels in Vegas. Emo Kylo mopes around for the whole first two-thirds of the movie basically doing nothing but calling up Rey to whine. Leia, who is now, apparently, Glinda the Good, is - literally - asleep and out of gas.

Any chance to develop Rey's character is completely wasted. The single courageous decision in the movie was to make the hype surrounding her parents irrelevant. This one choice could have made her interesting, because now she is not your standard Mary Sue. But lots of movies have heroines that are not Mary Sues. And the bare fact that she has turned out to be a brave nobody can't save her from our disinterest in the ridiculous powers given to her for apparently no reason. When she was camping out in an AT-AT in the desert, we identified with her, she was a magical orphan. Now that she can move (CGI) mountains, she is as dull and lifeless as a (CGI) alien.

There is no big secret about Snoke and the First Order, how they arose, how the happy ending of RotJ was corrupted. No, apparently Luke just got a bit faffed out and the new villains were merely a plot device to make more movies, which is dumb. There is no reason why Leia hugged Rey at the end of TFA. That turns out to have just been dumb. There is no reason Kylo said "what girl" - that too, apparently, was just dumb.

Luke's force projection is just laughable nonsense lifted straight from the Matrix. Like moving twenty tons of rocks, it is such a gigantic and implausible plot gesture that there is no reason for anyone to be interested in it. Why not just have him lift his pinkie and blow up all the baddies? Like the fireworks at Disney World, this kind of BS is the result of the director being told to "go big!" This one plot device is also a giant metaphor for CGI, which returns with a vengeance. Apparently we can now make CGI movies where twenty thousand CGI storm troopers with their fifty CGI ships can besiege a giant CGI door, just like we can now apparently project an image of ourself across the galaxy - but we can't make a movie which engages our limited human emotions. We can't make a movie that "goes small". There is no reason, whatsoever, to care. There is only a reason to be revolted at the spectacle - like you would feel at Disney after eating your 73rd ice cream.

The dialog is atrocious, infantile, relentless lampshading. Luke dies, but - There. Was. Peace. And. Purpose. Because - someone says so. When silhouette Luke appeared out of nowhere to Leia during the rebel's last (Helms Deep) stand, one guy shouted out "this is so bad!" It was.

It's a movie where any remaining minority of creative people interested in anything other than getting paid seem like they were just phoning it in. It's a movie that looks like it was made by seventeen different committees of billionaires, meeting briefly on their way to golf.

I literally would not have been surprised if that kid at the end sweeping the floor had gotten on that broom and flown away.

PS:

PPS: Han shot first. F everybody.

Generally, enjoyment of speech is the gateway to poor [results]. So it becomes the foundation for generating all negative emotional states. Jampel Pawo, The Certainty of the Diamond Mind

A monumental pile of steaming excrement. Worse then the prequels which, while hideous, at least were not soft reboots. Perhaps actually the dumbest film ever made. The Last Star Wars movie and in fact the last occasion to ever trust any movie critic ever again. What, Disney didn't wine and dine 7% of critics on the planet on RottenTomatoes? Live and learn. Next time they'll seal the deal.

SPOILERS:

Where to begin? Rey's dark-side vision. That scene is a metaphor for the entire movie. In TFA, her vision was a moment of pure magic, a scene which opened up new mythical possibilities. In TLJ, it's a cold, dead anticlimax. It's like the waiter at a Disney restaurant brings you your dinner, removes the lid - and there's nothing there but a plastic steak. The magic basically evaporates at this point.

The entire plot is so farcical I have to wonder if someone, somewhere is deliberately winding up the audience. Finn and Rose are off riding camels in Vegas. Emo Kylo mopes around for the whole first two-thirds of the movie basically doing nothing but calling up Rey to whine. Leia, who is now, apparently, Glinda the Good, is - literally - asleep and out of gas.

Any chance to develop Rey's character is completely wasted. The single courageous decision in the movie was to make the hype surrounding her parents irrelevant. This one choice could have made her interesting, because now she is not your standard Mary Sue. But lots of movies have heroines that are not Mary Sues. And the bare fact that she has turned out to be a brave nobody can't save her from our disinterest in the ridiculous powers given to her for apparently no reason. When she was camping out in an AT-AT in the desert, we identified with her, she was a magical orphan. Now that she can move (CGI) mountains, she is as dull and lifeless as a (CGI) alien.

There is no big secret about Snoke and the First Order, how they arose, how the happy ending of RotJ was corrupted. No, apparently Luke just got a bit faffed out and the new villains were merely a plot device to make more movies, which is dumb. There is no reason why Leia hugged Rey at the end of TFA. That turns out to have just been dumb. There is no reason Kylo said "what girl" - that too, apparently, was just dumb.

Luke's force projection is just laughable nonsense lifted straight from the Matrix. Like moving twenty tons of rocks, it is such a gigantic and implausible plot gesture that there is no reason for anyone to be interested in it. Why not just have him lift his pinkie and blow up all the baddies? Like the fireworks at Disney World, this kind of BS is the result of the director being told to "go big!" This one plot device is also a giant metaphor for CGI, which returns with a vengeance. Apparently we can now make CGI movies where twenty thousand CGI storm troopers with their fifty CGI ships can besiege a giant CGI door, just like we can now apparently project an image of ourself across the galaxy - but we can't make a movie which engages our limited human emotions. We can't make a movie that "goes small". There is no reason, whatsoever, to care. There is only a reason to be revolted at the spectacle - like you would feel at Disney after eating your 73rd ice cream.

The dialog is atrocious, infantile, relentless lampshading. Luke dies, but - There. Was. Peace. And. Purpose. Because - someone says so. When silhouette Luke appeared out of nowhere to Leia during the rebel's last (Helms Deep) stand, one guy shouted out "this is so bad!" It was.

It's a movie where any remaining minority of creative people interested in anything other than getting paid seem like they were just phoning it in. It's a movie that looks like it was made by seventeen different committees of billionaires, meeting briefly on their way to golf.

I literally would not have been surprised if that kid at the end sweeping the floor had gotten on that broom and flown away.

And...Next year around this time I will be doing my Rushen and Treckchod instruction retreat with Lama Pema Dorje, if all goes as planned.

That should be fantastic. I've received a fair amount of teaching and several empowerments from him since he lives in the Bay Area, but unfortunately I have not been able to attend his Trekchod retreats since I have not completed a traditional ngondro.

There is not only nothingness because there is always, and always can manifest. - Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

And...Next year around this time I will be doing my Rushen and Treckchod instruction retreat with Lama Pema Dorje, if all goes as planned.

That should be fantastic. I've received a fair amount of teaching and several empowerments from him since he lives in the Bay Area, but unfortunately I have not been able to attend his Trekchod retreats since I have not completed a traditional ngondro.

I sure hope so. I've seen him but never received any teachings from him before.

And...Next year around this time I will be doing my Rushen and Treckchod instruction retreat with Lama Pema Dorje, if all goes as planned.

That should be fantastic. I've received a fair amount of teaching and several empowerments from him since he lives in the Bay Area, but unfortunately I have not been able to attend his Trekchod retreats since I have not completed a traditional ngondro.

I sure hope so. I've seen him but never received any teachings from him before.

Dude knows how to bring it.

There is not only nothingness because there is always, and always can manifest. - Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

That should be fantastic. I've received a fair amount of teaching and several empowerments from him since he lives in the Bay Area, but unfortunately I have not been able to attend his Trekchod retreats since I have not completed a traditional ngondro.

I sure hope so. I've seen him but never received any teachings from him before.

Dude knows how to bring it.

I hear he's got skillz. His wife and son seem really nice, too.

I figured you for the type who's working on their 3rd ngondro just for fun!

I figured you for the type who's working on their 3rd ngondro just for fun!

Nah, I'm barely a beginner tbh.

If you spent as much time doing ngondro as you did complaining about not doing ngondro you would have done a ngondro, or not?

But seriously: ngondro is better than bacon dude, you are missing out!

"My religion is not deceiving myself."Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde

Dude, I'm doing ngondro! But I won't have anything like the traditional numbers any time soon!

Took me about nine years.

Anyway, aren't you a vegetarian?

Yeah, doesn't mean I don't like the taste of bacon though.

"My religion is not deceiving myself."Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde

I Porto
You Portas
He/She/It Portat
We Portamus
You (pl.) Portatis
They Portant

Is this really im-Portant?

"My religion is not deceiving myself."Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde